frangipani 2.0
Howdy and welcome to frangipani 2.0! It looks kinda familiar doesn’t it. I didn’t want to lose the colour scheme.
The site is – at this point – still full of bugs, which is to be expected with the import of such a massive database from one system to another…. I’m working on it, but in the meantime, let me know if you find anything askew.
www.martinecotton.com
Go and take a look at www.martinecotton.com
Yes folks, I have finally finished my portfolio website at long last. Well, finished may be a premature word. But at least it’s at a point where everything works! The next step is to cull the images in the galleries to about 16 per gallery. An impossible task. But it must be done. The site was made using Lightroom Galleries LRG 3 template, and was relatively painless. Sandi, honey, hope you don’t mind being the star image but I needed to use an image with mostly black on the right side so people could read the about and contact pages, and this pic works perfectly – sorry honey.
Oh and guess what? I have finally got the Manholes of Japan Gallery back up again, after nearly a 2 year absence!
I decided to start up a new blog: http://martinecottonphotography.wordpress.com/. It’s gonna be a place where I write about all things phototastic in my world. I’m gonna keep the photo a day project running here though, (and yes, I know I’m quite overdue for a post – it’s coming, it’s coming) and the more personal stuff I like to waffle on with.
People, I am serious about my photography. If anyone needs a photographer for portrait or event work please get in touch with me through the contact form at the new site. Spread the word. This little chikadee needs work.
Technorati Tags: internet, Photography, manholes of japan, www.martinecotton.com
Leechblock, my lifesaver.
The roof of Kinkakuji, Kyoto on a gloom day.
Frustrated at how slowly things have been moving, I’ve been a little dark lately. Either a symptom or a cause (or both?), one of the big problems has been time wasted on internet sites like facebook, flickr, asoboo, bloglines, google news, etc….
Today I feel a whole lot lighter. I found the perfect fix to my internet addiction: a firefox add-on called Leechblock. Lifehacker has a nice overview of it here.
Basically I have banned myself from facebook, twitter, asoboo between the hours of 9 – 12.30, 1.30 – 6 and 7.30 – 10. And then I put a time limit of 30 minutes every 6 hours on google news and bloglines. I couldn’t bear to block flickr. But we’ll see how it goes. You can check a box that forbids you from making any changes to the settings during the times that the blocks/limits are imposed to make it impossible for your resolve to be compromised.
You wasting too much time on the net? Get this add-on. Suspect I may actually start blogging more regularly again now…..
Twittering along in front of Big Brother
Who cares about big brother any more? Seems radical transparency is becoming the new corporate and lifestyle choice.
I just joined the ranks of net-lemmings and joined twitter. At first, I really wasn’t interested. But I’ve warmed to the idea some and think I’ll give it a shot. It’s a kind of real time IM thing where you (and your friends) log in and write a 140 character message about what you’re doing…. I think I’m going to enjoy using it when I can’t be bothered to make a full blog post and edit pic’s. You’ll see the new little window just in the left sidebar. Might need to tweak my main style design to allow my sidebars a bit more width…. it’s hard to read the text in the twitterbox at this size. You can also check in and see what your friends are up to, on your personal profile page.
Anyway, read more about twitter at kottke, graceful flavor, the Twitter fan wiki, and the BBC.
My twitter profile is http://twitter.com/frangipani should you be so inclined to join the ranks. Family members and close friends are especially encouraged to join up, especially those in Australia (go on, you know you wanna).
The above photos were all taken in Naka-Meguro on Saturday. It is quite the street art hub.
Last.fm is kinda cool
This is a live chart of what’s been playing on itunes in these here parts….
My friend Milo lives in Fiji these days, but he’s still making/deconstructing music and building amazing wooden buildings and furniture. This morning he sent me an invitation to join an online music community thing called Last.fm. I’ve never really checked it out before though I had heard some flap and fluster about it and well…. I’ve lost about 2 hours this morning checking out the site and am really impressed. I reckon it’ll be an awesome way to learn about and share new music.
Here’s my last.fm profile – join up and ‚Äúfriend‚Äù me (ew, cringe, i hate this aspect of social sites) and tell me about any new cool music worth having a listen to. If you wanna.
I fell off the moderation wagon last night and seem to having trouble getting moving this morning…
Arab Strap’s last ever show – the video!
One of my all time favourite bands, Arab Strap (from Scotland) played their last ever show as part of a secret tour of Tokyo in December 2006. Yes folks, they have now finished. So sad. It was a great night, and you can see pics here. There were a lot of people who had travelled from all over the world for this show, and real tears in the last few songs.
The above movie is actually edited…. the below aren’t. It includes mostly clips of the spoken parts of the gig, including the bit where Aiden took off his shoes because ‚Äúit was the end of the road‚Äù. I used my Canon Powershot G3 and was a wee bit tipsy after drinkin’ with the band and MissSin and some crazy couple who had flown all the way from my hometown of Brisbane before the show, so the camerawork is well dodgy.
My first foray into Youtube caused only a slight headache. All future attempts will now be a piece of piss (erm, that’s Australian for ‚Äúvery easy‚Äù).
Zenzi.org – The Photoblog
So this guy Regis left a nice comment about the new tattoo – he has a URL in his comment deets, so I went to check it out. I think you should too. He is a good photographer and he gets to do a hell of a lot of travel. I like the way he edits his photos too. Loved the blue city photos from Rajasthan – among others! The photo above is from Udaipur.
Zenzi.org – The Photoblog: The link goes straight to his archives for 2006. Go get a nice hot/cold beverage and settle in.
Technorati Tags: photography, travel, travelphotography, web
Bored with the internet?
This little comic piece is …so …damn… right-on.
From: xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
Just some administrivia…
Once again my computer is playing up (and my web server too actually, but that one’s out of my control) – having all sorts of mystifying email and application problems. I ran a scan on the HD using iDefrag and found it’s all a complete mess – so much so that the program apparently can’t even perform a complete de-frag. The little window shows major red sectors. Scary. I guess that would explain the endless spinning beachball of death… I wonder why it’s happened? Maybe I got a virus?
So. I will shortly be re-loading Tiger OS (once the back up clone is ready). Depending on how that goes, things may or may not be quiet around here for a while.
Once again, please redirect emails from the main frangipani account to my gmail account: martinecotton@gmail.com, especially if you sent me something in the past 5 or so days and have had no reply yet – you’ll need to resend it ’cause I ain’t seen it. All rather a pain in the arse on my Bday week. Oh, and thanks for all your bday wishes. 
It is (almost) done
Spent much of the weekend tinkering away at the back end of the site and am happy to report that, for the most part, everything went pretty smoothly – if you notice anything weird, please let me know…. Oh, and Typekey is NOT working yet, so don’t bother trying to sign in using Typekey to comment. Normal comments are working fine. I think… feel free to test it though….
Technorati Tags: MovableType, MT, MT 3.3, plugins, web
The eyes have it…
Another one of our exchange students, hanging around in the library. He may look suicidal in this pic but it’s all just show (most of the time). He does a great Kazakhi accent that just cracks me up. He is quite the deadpan comic and is in the process of becoming trilingual. Damn smarty pants. Great eyes, ne.
Technorati Tags: computer, friends, japan, photography, portraits, school, tokyo, web
Email woes
Just a quick note to say that my computer is playing havoc with my email program and that I haven’t been able to send emails out for a few days now. It also looks now as if I am no longer receiving incoming mails either. Am working on it but if you really need to contact me urgently, best to use martinecotton@gmail.com till the problem is sorted.
Oh Georgie…
Click here – trust me, you’ll have a ball… If he gets stuck, just move him with your cursor. In fact, you can push him around; toss him across the screen… it’s very therapeutic! Have fun. Thanks to Charlene for the forward.
Drunken web-tinkering
The photo: dozens of lamps made by elementary students using chopsticks for a local temple Noh Theatre event I went to last week. Made for a breathtaking entrance, nestled in amongst the garden near the temple tori gates.
Having my own drunken wake for m’little mate, Percy, drinking Kirin beer and attempting all sorts of long-set aside web activities in a temporary melancholy self-exile. Actually, it’s also my Mum and Dad’s 41st wedding anniversary today, so I’m finding myself awash in emotion and trying really hard to distract myself. I miss them so. Damn grief. Makes a blog (and life) rather dull, doesn’t it. Sorry…. Let’s move on to the more interesting web-tinkering stuff I’d like to share with you.
Technorati Tags: photography, web
AustralianBlogs.com.au
Australian bloggers based here in Japan (or wherever you may be) may be interested in “a new (free) community resource to bookmark Australian blogs. It is run by three people (in their spare time) and one fantastic patron. All do so on a volunteer basis.”
More bandwidth problems
Sorry about the password protection of various parts of the site, but we are, once again, having bandwidth problems and it seems the site keeps crashing the server. They are going to move the site to a new server but in the mean time, it will remain password protected.
An unveiling…
The garden inside Asakura Choso museum
The Shitamachi skyline from the rooft of Asakura Choso Museum – looking out towards Ueno.
I find your lack of faith disturbing
Crowds cleansing their souls with divine incense smoke as part of the traditional New Years visit to the local shrine
New RSS feed with pics and full entries
God I hope this all works! [IT WORKS!!!!! Phew. Please enjoy]
As requested, I have been tinkering with my RSS feed options and now (hopefully) have 2 options:
Full Feeds with complete posts and images
Excerpts (this is the previous feedburner RSS)
I’ve opted to use Feedburner as my main feed supply option so that I can keep a good tab on the number of people reading via RSS readers.
Here are a bunch of automatic links to get set up with the brand spanking new FULL FEED for you all:
